np: OU Suspect Testing Round 5 - Sandstorm (Excadrill/Thundurus Banned)

[alexwolf]

I think the biggest reason you would blame Drizzle over the rain abuser is because Drizzle creates a situation where the abuser has a permanent time frame to abuse the rain.

Except maybe Thundurus, I doubt you'd find many people willing to argue rain abusers would be broken in 5-8 turn rain.

Non-Drizzle Rain + Swift Swim is still available, after all, but nobody cares about that. (Granted, as long as permaweather inducers exist, no-one will care about non-permaweather, anyway.)

If rain abusers aren't broken out of rain or with limited rain, then it's pretty clear what's at fault.

(Whether rain abusers are 'broken' at all is another argument entirely, of course.)

And why exactly do you blame Drizzle and not SS???
As i told in the post before it doesn't matter if SSers are balanced without drizzle as drizzle is also balanced without the SSers!
It is clear that it is neither Drizzle's fault nor the SS's fault!
The blame goes to each individual broken SSer in drizzle conditions!That's why banning every one of them is better than aldaron's proposal imo...
After we have a no suspects period of 'course...!

 

[Notty]

Even if you accept the premise that Drizzle is balanced without Swift Swim (not necessarily an easy sell right now), if you also accept that Swift Swim without Drizzle is balanced, then you have the minimalist ban arguement that banning a single Pokemon to get rid of Drizzle (Politoed) is better than banning multiple rain abusers who would be balanced without Drizzle.

If both scenarios are balanced, then removing Drizzle gets you to the same point with less effort/bans.

 

[XienZo]

Even if you accept the premise that Drizzle is balanced without Swift Swim (not necessarily an easy sell right now), if you also accept that Swift Swim without Drizzle is balanced, then you have the minimalist ban arguement that banning a single Pokemon to get rid of Drizzle (Politoed) is better than banning multiple rain abusers who would be balanced without Drizzle.

If both scenarios are balanced, then removing Drizzle gets you to the same point with less effort/bans.

Using the number of Pokemon directly banned is a completely arbitrary measure of how much a ban actually removes.

Banning an abuser has minor effects on the remaining abusers that are left.

Meanwhile, banning Politoed essentially kills the usefulness of nearly every single rain-abusing niche, relegating even the most powerful one, Kingdra, to UU. Thus, banning a "single" pokemon, Politoed, not only removes every single rain abuser that would be banned under individual bans, but also removes many other abusers that never would have been banned anyway.

Ultimately, banning Drizzle is "one" ban that has more dire consequences than even tens of individual abuser bans.

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

Personally, I don't mind whether we ban Politoed, or whether we ban Kingdra, Thundurus, Toxicroak and Ludicolo (or whatever would get banned if we took the rain abuser route).

As long as we get a good metagame from the output, it's okay. Banning rain abusers gives us more control. We can nerf rain by a plethora of different levels doing that, but by testing Politoed there's just 2 levels, rain or no rain, although it is the easier and quicker option.

 

[spweasel]

Kinda ninja'd, but oh well.

Even if you accept the premise that Drizzle is balanced without Swift Swim (not necessarily an easy sell right now), if you also accept that Swift Swim without Drizzle is balanced, then you have the minimalist ban arguement that banning a single Pokemon to get rid of Drizzle (Politoed) is better than banning multiple rain abusers who would be balanced without Drizzle.

If both scenarios are balanced, then removing Drizzle gets you to the same point with less effort/bans.

Banning Swift Swim outright bans nothing that wouldn't be soft-banned (i.e. made completely nonviable) by banning Drizzle anyways. That would mean that banning Swift Swim instead of Drizzle would leave the metagame with more usable Pokemon. Rain Dance absolutely cannot compete with Drought, Sand Stream, or Snow Warning, so banning Drizzle will more or less reduce any Rain abuse abilities to blank abilities just like if they were Unnerve or Illuminate.

And I still stand by my assessment that in any environment that allows for a player to reliably set up long-term Rain, Swift Swim is at worst very powerful and at best completely broken. Sure, without Drizzle around it's not going to be viable in OU where there are several other weather starters around, but in a virtually weatherless metagame, Rain Dance + Swift Swim will have a very real chance to cause havoc (last Gen's UU is a good example). Thus, banning Swift Swim itself for brokenness does not feel all that unreasonable.

The only real drawbacks to banning Swift Swim instead of Drizzle (if Drizzle alone is not broken) is that it removes a viable strategy from lower tiers (which really should not be a consideration for OU tiering), and that it prevents a small number of Pokemon from using their pre-Gen V moves.

 

[SJCrew]

Meanwhile, banning Politoed essentially kills the usefulness of nearly every single rain-abusing niche, relegating even the most powerful one, Kingdra, to UU. Thus, banning a "single" pokemon, Politoed, not only removes every single rain abuser that would be banned under individual bans, but also removes many other abusers that never would have been banned anyway.

Ultimately, banning Drizzle is "one" ban that has more dire consequences than even tens of individual abuser bans.

Wait, back up. Where's this constitution of Pokemon that says you're entitled to the right to have Kingdra in OU or to have other Rain-abusing niches at your disposal? Last I checked, Defensive Rain playstyles are mostly unused and have no significant impact on the OU metagame whatsoever.

Plenty of people use Tentacruel on non-Drizzle teams without Rain Dish, since it still has this fantastic ability called Liquid Ooze that steals momentum from Ferrothorn and other Grass types by denying them free recovery. You're not hurting Tentacruel by banning Drizzle. Vaporeon gets Water Absorb, another fantastic ability, and preforms the same role as it did in Gen 4 OU. It really doesn't even need Hydration. Blastoise and Ludicolo with Rain Dish? No one uses them; they don't have good enough stats or utility to be OU regardless.

The only Rain playstyle with any degree of significance or relevance is offensive. It's always been this way. Why is it suddenly important that we preserve a playstyle that no one uses when it forces us to keep around one that is indeed very detrimental to the metagame? Do you want Horn Drill Seaking or Double Team Accelgor back too? I'm pretty sure those aren't broken either, but they also got blanket banned with a move that was deemed to be broken in its entirety.

The collateral to banning Drizzle is completely sensationalized. You're not completely banning Pokemon from disuse, you're just removing the effectiveness of a small tool that hardly makes them any better for the greater cause of killing something that's actually hurting OU. I don't see anything wrong with that in the slightest.

 

[Pocket]

SJCrew, he is not talking about Defensive Rain, he is talking about the removal of Offensive Rain if we remove Drizzle. The loss of one entire strategy is greater than a loss of plural abusers; that is his argument.

 

[Meru]

I swear I can't run any defensive water types on my team otherwise Rotom-W terrorizes them. He's probably singlehandedly the reason why Slowbro isn't OU.

 

[Rosey Oak]

SJCrew, he is not talking about Defensive Rain, he is talking about the removal of Offensive Rain if we remove Drizzle. The loss of one entire strategy is greater than a loss of plural abusers; that is his argument.

The strategy wouldn't be lost though. It would still be available through the use of Rain Dance (Damp Rock),
so what makes Drizzle more important than 'plural abusers' now then?

 

[Pocket]

Rain Dance absolutely cannot compete with Drought, Sand Stream, or Snow Warning, so banning Drizzle will more or less reduce any Rain abuse abilities to blank abilities just like if they were Unnerve or Illuminate.

So essentially the strategy is killed. Are people using Rain Dance now to make use of Swift Swimmers? nah

 

[Ewil]

So essentially the strategy is killed.

and so ?
The strategy is powerful and everyone says that Drought is manageble even without rain, and sand needs (maybe) some bans (Excadrill only ?) to becomes manageble too.

 

[Rosey Oak]

@Pocket

Ok. I see what you mean now. Yes I agree that if Drizzle where to be banned, the other weathers (not hail) would most likely dominate.

However lets say, hypothetically both lv1 Kyogre (Drizzle) and Groundon (Drought) were allowed in OU and no other permanent weather inducers existed, therefore they both balanced out each other. If we were to do a suspect ladder test in which banned Kyogre (Drizzle) from the Metagame and Groundon (Drought) remained as the dominant weather, which eventually was proven to be over powered without the existence of Kyogre, would both become Uber or would they both stay OU because they balance each other out?

IF all Kyogre and Groundon do is hold each other back from being broken then I would ban them both. Why? because both in their own right were overcentralizing and dominating the Metagame.

We should all look at each weather individually. Would Drizzle be manageable without the existence of other weathers to balance it out and viceversa. I doubt hail would be a problem and the only Pokemon I think poses a problem in Sand is Excadrill.

In this case what would create a more balanced healthy Metagame:

1. The existence of Drizzle, Drought, Sand(Excadrill) which balance each other out.
2. The extinction of Drizzle, Drought and Excadrill which overpowered sand.

In my opinion it would be option 2, but I guess this is where those who are anti-weather and pro-weather views differ.

 

[XienZo]

Wait, back up. Where's this constitution of Pokemon that says you're entitled to the right to have Kingdra in OU or to have other Rain-abusing niches at your disposal? Last I checked, Defensive Rain playstyles are mostly unused and have no significant impact on the OU metagame whatsoever.

Plenty of people use Tentacruel on non-Drizzle teams without Rain Dish, since it still has this fantastic ability called Liquid Ooze that steals momentum from Ferrothorn and other Grass types by denying them free recovery. You're not hurting Tentacruel by banning Drizzle. Vaporeon gets Water Absorb, another fantastic ability, and preforms the same role as it did in Gen 4 OU. It really doesn't even need Hydration. Blastoise and Ludicolo with Rain Dish? No one uses them; they don't have good enough stats or utility to be OU regardless.

The only Rain playstyle with any degree of significance or relevance is offensive. It's always been this way. Why is it suddenly important that we preserve a playstyle that no one uses when it forces us to keep around one that is indeed very detrimental to the metagame? Do you want Horn Drill Seaking or Double Team Accelgor back too? I'm pretty sure those aren't broken either, but they also got blanket banned with a move that was deemed to be broken in its entirety.

The collateral to banning Drizzle is completely sensationalized. You're not completely banning Pokemon from disuse, you're just removing the effectiveness of a small tool that hardly makes them any better for the greater cause of killing something that's actually hurting OU. I don't see anything wrong with that in the slightest.

Wrong quote...? That post had nothing to do with preserving rain stall playstyles.

However, since I have actually used the preserving rain stall argument before, I'll briefly comment on it:


Yes, it's not a big deal at all, and it never was too major of playstyle, and we've ruined playstyles in the past because we'd screw ourselves over otherwise.

I agree with you on that.


However, even though it's a very minor loss, it's still an avoidable one in this case; individual abuser bans accomplish the same desired effects of preventing offensive rain abusers from being broken without losing rain stall.


It's a minor matter, indeed, but it's still preferable, all else being equal, to keep it if everything else is treated with just as well, or even better, than it would have with a plain Drizzle ban.

 

[alphatron]

Outside of Lanturn and Gastrodon, Rotom-W does indeed make it impossible to get away with using a bulky water without being punished for it.But such is the OU metagame. Kind of like how you can't use tangrowth in DW metagame because Chandelure will always punish you for it.

 

[TheGuyWhoIsSitting]

I know I'm not a top player on the server and I wouldn't say I'm horrible at the game, but honestly. You guys are talking about Rain as if Drizzle has always been around in OU since Gen 1.

Did we not see that Permarain and abusers were crazy over powered in every gen it's been available in? What makes Politoed any different from Kyogre or any Pokemon with Drizzle? UU has shown us people would even waste a slot for infinite sun with Vulpix.

I don't think we can say Rain isn't broken because people wouldn't keep bringing it up if they didn't think it wasn't. I know people have their opinions, but for the most part all I can hear from people about this metagame is "weather counters weather" and that seems to be the general consensus. The majority of people who find Rain and Sun manageable generally run Sandstorm.

I don't see why people are so determined to keep a play style that has literally only existed since Swift Swim and permanent rain was banned.

I also don't see how Drought isn't considered broken by a lot of people, I would love to see the teams people within the voting requirements use because if they're all using weather I think it's pretty obvious they don't find other weather broken.

Drought has a lot going for it, a good chunk of Pokemon with Chlorophyll have Sleep Powder or a sleep inducing move (granted a few swift swim Pokemon and I mean a very small chunk of them get Hypnosis or Yawn, Golduck in particular), sure it can miss but so can Draco Meteor, which people have brought up before with certain Pokemon like Salamence in 4th gen. I can't think of too many Pokemon that aren't considerably more powerful with double speed. On top of that, how far does the Drizzle/SS ban even go?

I can make a team and abuse my opponents infinite weather even if there are bans to keep all the doubling abilities off the same teams. I can also vouche for having gotten wrecked by a swift swim Kingdra abusing my infinite rain. However if Drought+Chlorophyll got banned hardly anyone is going to continue to use Drought unless it's to get rid of the other weathers. That seems to be the problem this generation and no matter how you look at it we're going to be banning Pokemon.

Just answer me this, why does Drizzle need to stay in OU? Drizzle brings so much good to the table there's hardly anything bad it does for your team other than making fire type moves unreliable on your team.

What if they do decide to see what Pokemon are broken with infinite rain ans swift swim? You can't honestly tell me you're going to use a Luvdisc on a Drizzle team or anything else that isn't insanely good, and if you just ban Drizzle from OU we get to keep all the Pokemon that would be banned otherwise. I don't see why 5th gen makes this any different from the other generations, Garchomp has been banned in every generation since he was available so far, Drizzle has also been banned until now, so what makes 5th gen different? Why is it when in 4th gen level 1 Groudon and Kyogre were deemed uber but level 100 Politoed and Ninetales are OU? Yes we still have TTar, we always have had him since second gen and infinite sand since third, and in third gen we didn't have half of this mess that the metagame has now.

Even though we've seen from a certain poll on the site that a majority of people would continue to play Smogon OU even if all perma weather was banned. So obviously the handful of players who keep voting permanent weather to be OU are the only ones being considered with these posts and votes.

I guess we'll see as time comes, but so far it looks like people are so determined to keep Politoed OU, why not go ahead and make Kyogre OU too because honestly what's the difference? Why not try Groudon in OU? I've heard people say time and time before Groudon is far from broken, so why not? Politoed's Hydro Pump in rain is as powerful as Latios' Draco Meteor with no draw backs other than accuracy. Oh wait, that's right Kyogre gets Water Spout, but we have other weather to weaken that and Blissey available to check it don't we? (blatant sarcasm)

I guess I'm ready to have my post ripped apart now. I have gotten decently high rankings on the server but that really doesn't amount to anything, does it? Bottom line is I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way and there are people who honest in their hearts believe nothing in this generation needs to be banned and if they could they'd go back to the metagame before Skymin and Darkrai got banned and say the game is balanced. Go ahead and rip this post apart, I'm curious to see the response about why I'm so wrong and how not broken permanent weather is. As a final word, I personally have never enjoyed running weather and I don't want to have to run weather or waste a move slot on Hail just to make sure I still have a chance to pull through in the end, but that's probably just me, since all the permaweather is clearly balanced.

 

[alphatron]

If I want to succeed in this metagame, I have to run a steel type pokemon.

If I run an excadrill weak team, then I have to run a bronzong, gliscor, or skarmory.

If I run a team full of viable pokemon who are weak to stealth rock, then I have to run this piece of shit, base 20 power un STAB'd attack.

People have goten over using certain tools to work around powerful strategies before. If dedicating one moveslot to the move, hail, is all it takes for you to stop weather, then why not? If weather was truly broken, then it would not have survived four suspect tests.

In any case, drought is far from broken. Between tommorow and Tuesday, I will prove how it isn't. And a majority of the chlorophyll pokemon are awful. Even the better ones are a nonfactor in the OU metagame. Alright, so tangrowth uses sleep powder. My opponent then switches in Latias. Oops. Time to switch out as it ignores my offensive prowess and uses calm mind.

 

[Stunt]

Honestly, after 1 DD, haxorus can perform sweeps.
He makes me run so many precautions on my teams ...

Thundurus is easy.... ice beam on blissey or something

but of course, my philosophy is always ban nothing :)

 

[Progeusz]

I also don't see how Drought isn't considered broken by a lot of people

Because Sun teams are heavily reliant on Sun (while Sand teams are good in any weather) and have weakest Pokemon in case of not favorable weather (not to mention the worst inducer). Drought boost is less useful than Drizzle boost. Chlorophyllers die to any Fire attack boosted by their own Sun and at the same time they can't use Fire attacks outside of Hidden Power.

Drought has a lot going for it, a good chunk of Pokemon with Chlorophyll have Sleep Powder or a sleep inducing move (granted a few swift swim Pokemon and I mean a very small chunk of them get Hypnosis or Yawn, Golduck in particular), sure it can miss but so can Draco Meteor, which people have brought up before with certain Pokemon like Salamence in 4th gen.

Drizzle abusers don't have to sleep opponents, they simply slaughter them with Thunders or boosted Hydro Pumps.
There's no point in comparing 90 acc move that kills almost anything to 60/75 acc move that can't be used second time because of Sleep Clause (and does absolutely nothing to status absorbers while DM deals fair amount of damage even if resisted).

Garchomp has been banned in every generation since he was available so far, Drizzle has also been banned until now, so what makes 5th gen different?

I don't want to make it personal however it's hard to answer it seriously.
Yeah, every generetion. Whooping two generations. Drizzle was banned because the only Pokemon with Drizzle was at the same time the strongest Pokemon, it's obvious. In V Gen we have Politoed who is much weaker = not broken in lower tier.

level 1 Groudon and Kyogre

Ever heard of complex ban? They are bad. Especially in that form. Mewtwo might be UU if we set 70 lvl cap for it.

Yes we still have TTar, we always have had him since second gen and infinite sand since third, and in third gen we didn't have half of this mess that the metagame has now.

Are you aware that there was no Excadrill in III/IV Gen? Actually, there were no Sand abusers because there was no boost?

Even though we've seen from a certain poll on the site that a majority of people would continue to play Smogon OU even if all perma weather was banned.

I would play metagame without weather because it's smogon server =/= I want weather banned.

why not go ahead and make Kyogre OU too because honestly what's the difference?

Ttar dies to Specs Water Spout from Kyogre, Ttar survives Specs Pump from Politoed. Seriously, that's dumb.

I've heard people say time and time before Groudon is far from broken, so why not?

Where? On gamefaqs? maybe they were trolling?

Personally, I don't see how metagame would be dominated by Drought after Drizzle ban... It would be Sandstorm metagame.

 

[Kefka Palazzo™]

I've heard people say time and time before Groudon is far from broken, so why not?

Whaaaaaat!??!

So, 140 Defense, 100 HP, 150 Attack, Drought, and an amazing move pool that allows it to sweep entire teams with RP and SD.
Yea, FAR from broken.

Skymin for OU? Okay, I mean it did deserve a test in Round 1 and it proved to be Uber.

Darkrai for OU? Fine, I mean with so many new Fighting types it can't possibly be Uber....wrong.

Ho-Oh for OU? Understandable you might want that because of his Rock weakness.

Lugia for OU? Fine, I mean he isn't really THAT strong.

Groudon for OU?

Get out T_T

 

[Mario With Lasers]

Why is it when in 4th gen level 1 Groudon and Kyogre were deemed uber but level 100 Politoed and Ninetales are OU? Yes we still have TTar, we always have had him since second gen and infinite sand since third, and in third gen we didn't have half of this mess that the metagame has now.

Jesus fucking Christ, I hate every single one of you fuckers who never get this shit right. This fucking lv1 pseudo-test was in ADVANCE, before Emerald was released iirc, and happened in Netbattle. We did have a weather test in 4th Gen; it happened with lv70 or so versions of Kyogre and Groudon, and was set up in... Create-A-Pokémon's server. You know, the server which had almost no players (not attacking the playerbase here) compared to the Smogon Server. You know, the server with a completely different metagame with made-up pokémon. Whatever results we got in a 3rd Gen test with a completely different metagame when most of you guys didn't even know what a Pikachu was and in a 4th Gen test held in a server most of you probably have never even heard of shouldn't have any relevance in a fifth Gen metagame suspect process. Whether Drizzle, Drought, Politoed, Kingdra, Thundurus, Starmie, Ferrothorn, Swift Swim, Thunder, Hurricane, Water-type moves, Ninetales, Victini, Darmanitan, Venusaur, Fire-type moves or auto-weather is broken should be decided solely based on the current state of 5th Gen's OU metagame, because that's the only thing that matters.

 

[SJCrew]

Wrong quote...? That post had nothing to do with preserving rain stall playstyles.

Why would you even cite Rain-abusing niches as a reason not to ban Drizzle if you're not even really referring to Rain-abusing niches? Swift Swim offensive is not "worth saving", and we have a complex plan to prove it. Defensive Rain isn't either because it sucks. Electric types don't need Thunder and Flying types don't need Hurricane to function. They'll get along all the same as they have been pre-Drizzle.

No part of what Drizzle offers is necessary for our metagame. If it's broken and we ban it, we're playing a better and more balanced game, not the other way around.

However, even though it's a very minor loss, it's still an avoidable one in this case; individual abuser bans accomplish the same desired effects of preventing offensive rain abusers from being broken without losing rain stall.

It's a minor matter, indeed, but it's still preferable, all else being equal, to keep it if everything else is treated with just as well, or even better, than it would have with a plain Drizzle ban.

Micromanaging complex bans is even worse than complex bans. Even worse, you admit there is no profit other than a misguided sense of justice. If doing 'justice' to useless, uncompetitive Pokemon requires any amount of time or energy, I'd rather keep trucking and focus on the big picture.

 

[XienZo]

Why would you even cite Rain-abusing niches as a reason not to ban Drizzle if you're not even really referring to Rain-abusing niches? Swift Swim offensive is not "worth saving", and we have a complex plan to prove it. Defensive Rain isn't either because it sucks. Electric types don't need Thunder and Flying types don't need Hurricane to function. They'll get along all the same as they have been pre-Drizzle.

No part of what Drizzle offers is necessary for our metagame.

Nothing is "necessary" for our metagame at all though; we just have whatever we vote for.

If it's broken and we ban it, we're playing a better and more balanced game, not the other way around.

Of course a Drizzle ban would be better than no bans on rain.

A SwSw ban would also be better than no bans.

Alderon's proposal would be better than no bans.

And individual threat bans would be better than no bans.

Each of those addresses the problem of a broken rain offense playstyle and produces a better game than before, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider all of them before we choose one.

Micromanaging complex bans is even worse than complex bans. Even worse, you admit there is no profit other than a misguided sense of justice. If doing 'justice' to useless, uncompetitive Pokemon requires any amount of time or energy, I'd rather keep trucking and focus on the big picture.

What complex bans are you referring to...?

If you're unfamiliar with my solution, it's to repeal Alderon's proposal and then suspect test and potentially simple ban weather abusing threats. "Threats", as used here, describe Kingdra, Ludicolo, Kabutops, Thunderous, Excadrill, and the like. Nothing complex about it.



And, no, the rain stall shenanigan is far from the main perk of the individual ban solution. All this "justice" you speak of was just an "accidental" perk that happened to come up. The individual ban solution was never based on such an advantage; it helps a bit, but it's totally unnecessary.

The individual ban solution basically accomplishes everything all the other solutions do while suffering virtually none of the problems aside from the dubious accusation that we may "waste time", an accusation I addressed earlier and can repeat if you aren't familiar with it.

 

[Rosey Oak]

To what extent does the end justify the means?

@XienZo

Why must this 'playstyle' be preserved? What benefits does it bring to the Metagame? Does the benefits of Drizzle out way the negatives? - and thus lead to a more desirable Metagame. Can we even undoubtedly prove anything without a suspect ladder?


I have started a thread which revolves around the topic of why something should or should not be banned in general.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3450326

Feel free to contribute your opinion on the matter. Likewise to everyone else.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

The main I think the community as a whole needs to do is trust in the voting process and adapt to the metagame that is presented. I see far too many posts whining about something's brokeness and too many attacks on the process.

Here's the deal people, the suspect process is not exclusive. If you want to vote play your way up. If you don't want to play your way, shut up and adapt. Do I have the skills to play my way to the top of the ladder? Yes. Do I have the inclination? No. Do I agree with the Garchomp ban? No. Do I sit around the Suspect Thread whining about it? No.

I trust in the suspect process and the ability for users to have a say in voting. If I'd wanted Chomp to stay out that badly I would have played up and voted so. Because I didn't I sit back and adapt to what the metagame brings us after each round of voting. The suspect process works. It's that simple.

A part of my post in that thread.

 

[November Blue]

If weather was truly broken, then it would not have survived four suspect tests.

No.

Drizzle is broken. It has survived four suspect rounds because we're trying to ascertain if we can salvage it with complex bans. The votes have in no way proved drizzle OU. Round four clearly illustrated how the community is divided over drizzle. A 49-51 vote to keep drizzle doesn't mean that it's OU worthy, fine as it is or manageable. It means that the majority of players believe that it's broken, but can't agree on the best way to deal with it.

I think that SJCrew is right. Why do we need to keep drizzle??

If it goes, sand might dominate, yeah. What's wrong with sand dominating though? It was the gen IV metagame, and it was never considered ban worthy. Granted, we have offensive sand abusers now, but none are currently considered problematic save excadrill. Sand is top dog right now, and I think I can safely say that we're all fine with that.

I think that we should just ban drizzle though. We're never going to stop arguing about it, and there will always be another alternative that's going to sway some people, maybe enough to tie another vote. There are so many possible routes that we could take involving pokemon bans, complex bans, combination bans, and other crazy stuff that borders on stupidity just to keep drizzle in OU. I'm talking about a supposed event horizon where we've banned numerous pokemon, implemented several complex bans, or hampered the metagame in several ways that bend it around drizzle that it becomes apparent how broken it is by virtue of how much it takes to balance it. And then where are we? We've twisted the metagame into a broken testing ground while squandering several months of suspect testing time, and if we finally do decide unanimously that drizzle is broken (and hell has frozen over) it's going to take six months of foot dragging and backtracking to stabilize the metagame once more (because some things will have changed.)

I don't really consider sand a proper weather. In gen IV it was considered an omnipresent battle condition like stealth rock. Now it's just being lumped together with drizzle and drought. It doesn't share the myriad beneficial effects that drought and drizzle do. There are no offensive characteristics that make it threatening on it's own, and you have to run specific pokemon with certain abilities to gain any benefits from it's presence. While drizzle alters type resistances and assists certain moves, sand has no similar effects. Any broken aspects come from the abusers, not the sand itself. IMO this is (partly) why we all want excadrill banned instead of sand. Weather wars means nothing when we talk about banning drizzle. It keeps sun in check (read: holds it back) and promotes sand use. Sand doesn't need to be kept in check, and drought would finally get a chance to flourish without rain trumping it. If more pokemon saw increased use because of drought, I'd call that positive metagame diversity and a good reason to get rid of drizzle.

We don't need it to balance the other weathers. This "weather wars" argument is stupid. Sand is everywhere right now as a preemptive measure against rain. Drought is held back. Hail is nonexistent. How exactly do the weathers balance each other? All I see is one weather so powerful that it requires several special treatments, supersedes one weather and drives the other into overuse to check it.